जी.ए.,तुझ्या रुपकांप्रमाणे जर जग बदलत जाऊ लागले...

Author G A Kulkarni (जी ए कुलकर्णी) was very fond of metaphors/ allegories.

Quite a few of his stories are allegorical- an extended metaphor wherein a story illustrates an important attribute of the subject.

A character is his short story says:

"अरे, निर्बुद्ध, जड जगाविषयी बदलती रुपके करत राहण्यापेक्षा तुझ्या रुपकांप्रमाणे जर जग बदलत जाऊ लागले तर तुला तरी जास्त काय हवे सांग."

("...hey, instead of creating changing metaphors for stupid, gross world, if the world started changing to suit your metaphors, tell me what more you want.")

['Pinglavel' (पिंगळावेळ) 1977]

Another one:

"छट, असली हजार माणसांनी आपल्या अर्ध्या सोंडी खुपसलेली, हजार जणांनी ढुंगण पुसलेली मलिन चिंध्यांसारखी वाक्यं मी कधीच वापरत नाही ! मला शब्द हवेत नव्या नाण्यांसारखे कलदार, मला वाक्य हवं ते सुरीच्या नव्या धारेसारख स्वच्छ, जिवंत."

("...ditch it, I never use sentences pierced by half trunks of thousands of humans, like rags which have been used to wipe asses by thousands! I want words jaunty like new coins, I want a sentence like an edge of newly sharpened knife- spotless, alive.")

['Ramalkhuna' (रमलखुणा), 1975]

Just count the number of metaphors in the quote above!

Eric Felten says in WSJ February 7 2011:

"Metaphor is crucial to the way the brain works. Is it also dangerous?

...Metaphor works, most obviously, when we recognize a similarity between two different things. It is a matter of "pattern recognition," which may be more important in the working of the brain than logic. "Early human thought proceeded by metaphor," according to Nobel Prize-winning neurobiologist Gerald Edelman. And this imprecise sort of figurative thinking is "a major source of imagination and creativity in adult life."...

...For Aristotle, a command of metaphor was "the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances." The psych-lab linguists can pump the primes all they like, but the proper use of figurative language may well remain an art rather than a science."

"Early human thought proceeded by metaphor...a major source of imagination and creativity in adult life..."?

GA would have been glad to know!


Artist: William Steig, The New Yorker, 12 September 1931

(Almost eighty years later, Mr. Steig is as funny as he always was.)

p.s. This is one metaphor- 'old rusty gate'- that one day I'll be eligible for!